20
Nov
2014
By Calvin at 09:16 GMT, 9 years ago
If you’ve wondered why I’ve posted only a few news stories this week it’s because I’m extra busy with my crime prevention consultancy work.
Yesterday I visited a company in central London, which had suffered a burglary. The company shares the building with a number of others and there’s 24 hour access. It turns out that their main access controlled entrance door hadn’t closed properly during the night (the door closer needed adjusting – that’s all) and the open door was found by an opportunist burglar.
Once inside he found himself in the unmanned reception area where there was a second door fitted with a mortice sashlock and an electric release staple. The door is controlled by fobs issued to all the people who work in the building.
The victim couldn’t understand how the burglar had got past this door, so I took a look. The mortice sashlock was of the automatic deadlocking kind, which relies on an ancillary pin, which when depressed into the lock, deadlocks the live bolt. I could see at a glance that the pin was not being pressed into the lock by the striking plate, so I took out a credit card and within two seconds I’d pushed back the live bolt and opened the door. (The victim was most impressed by my technique!)
They’ll need to cover the lock mechanism with a steel plate, but really they need to change the door and frame as the gap between the both was far too great to ever allow that pin to be pressed in effectively.
I’ve come across this problem many times before, both in commercial buildings and in some households, where the rim version of the lock has been fitted to a loosely fitting front door.
If you’ve got one of these auto deadlocking mortice or rim locks have a look to see if it’s working properly as adjustments might be required.
I’ll be back on the website on Monday after I’ve written my reports!
